Black Sex Workers Matter

Why you should care about what the adult industry is doing in this moment

Anita Little

Tonight, adult industry heavyweights Lotus Lain and Ana Foxxx will be taking over Playboy’s Instagram Live platform to talk about race, an issue that’s been at the forefront of everyone’s mind for the past several weeks (assuming you’re white, of course—a reminder that black people think about race their entire lives). Porn is a billion-dollar industry with countless consumers, and yet so much of what happens in the industry is under-examined due to our society’s skittish attitude toward sex.

That means racism, along with sexism and a lot of other p‘isms,’ has been allowed to fester unchecked. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the globe, many industries from tech to publishing are facing a well-deserved reckoning, and the adult space has been no different. First it was a trickle of stories from black performers about navigating discrimination and marginalization in the industry. Then that trickle turned into a flood as black performer after black performer started calling out the industry’s shortcomings when it came to addressing anti-black racism. In advance of the panel we’re hosting with Lain and Foxxx, we wanted to give you five reasons why you should be paying attention to what the porn industry does in this moment.

1. Racial hierarchies in porn help to perpetuate racial hierarchies in our daily lives through the politics of desirability.